The Lion's Skin Read Online Free PDF Page B

amused your lordship I am happy," said Mr. Caryll in such a tone that Rotherby looked to see whether he was being roasted. "You wanted me, I think. I beg that you'll not thank me
for having descended. It was an honor."
    It occurred to Rotherby that this was a veiled reproof for the ill manners of the omission. Again he looked sharply at this man who was scanning him with such interest, but he detected in the
calm, high-bred face nothing to suggest that any mockery was intended. Belatedly he fell to doing the very thing that Mr. Caryll had begged him to leave undone: he fell to thanking him. As for Mr.
Caryll himself, not even the queer position into which he had been thrust could repress his characteristics. What time his lordship thanked him, he looked about him at the other occupants of the
room, and found that, besides the parson, sitting pale and wide-eyed at the table, there was present in the background his lordship's man—a quiet fellow, quietly garbed in gray, with a shrewd
face and shrewd, shifty eyes. Mr. Caryll saw, and registered, for future use, the reflection that eyes that are overshrewd are seldom wont to look out of honest heads.
    "You are desired," his lordship informed him, "to be witness to a marriage."
    "So much the landlady had made known to me."
    "It is not, I trust, a task that will occasion you any scruples."
    "None. On the contrary, it is the absence of the marriage might do that." The smooth, easy tone so masked the inner meaning of the answer that his lordship scarce attended to the words.
    "Then we had best get on. We are in haste."
    "'Tis the characteristic rashness of folk about to enter wedlock," said Mr. Caryll, as he approached the table with his lordship, his eyes as he spoke turning full upon the bride.
    My lord laughed, musically enough, but overloud for a man of brains or breeding. "Marry in haste, eh?" quoth he.
    "You are penetration itself," Mr. Caryll praised him.
    "'Twill take a shrewd rogue to better me," his lordship agreed.
    "Yet an honest man might worst you. One never knows. But the lady's patience is being taxed."
    It was as well he added that, for his lordship had turned with intent to ask him what he meant.
    "Aye! Come, Jenkins. Get on with your patter. Gaskell," he called to his man, "stand forward here." Then he took his place beside the lady, who had risen, and stood pale, with eyes cast down
and—as Mr. Caryll alone saw—the faintest quiver at the corners of her lips. This served to increase Mr. Caryll's already considerable cogitations.
    The parson faced them, fumbling at his book, Mr. Caryll's eyes watching him with that cold, level glance of theirs. The parson looked up, met that uncanny gaze, displayed his teeth in a grin of
terror, fell to trembling, and dropped the book in his confusion. Mr. Caryll, smiling sardonically, stooped to restore it him.
    There followed a fresh pause. Mr. Jenkins, having lost his place, seemed at some pains to find it again—amazing, indeed, in one whose profession should have rendered him so familiar with
its pages.
    Mr. Caryll continued to watch him, in silence, and—as an observer might have thought, as, indeed, Gaskell did think, though he said nothing at the time—with wicked relish.
     
    CHAPTER III
    THE WITNESS
    AT last the page was found again by Mr. Jenkins. Having found it, he hesitated still a moment, then cleared his throat, and in the manner of one hurling himself forward upon a
desperate venture, he began to read.
    "Dearly beloved, we are gathered here in the sight of God," he read, and on in a nasal, whining voice, which not only was the very voice you would have expected from such a man, but in
accordance, too, with sound clerical convention. The bridal pair stood before him, the groom with a slight flush on his cheeks and a bright glitter in his black eyes, which were not nice to see;
the bride with bowed head and bosom heaving as in response to inward tumult.
    The cleric came to the end of his exordium,